Summer, Shakespeare, Stitchings and Stuff

Hello! 

I have finally graduated from Houghton College (as of Saturday, May 14th, 2011) and am in possession of a BA in English literature, minors in Writing and Communications (Theatre Arts emphasis). Phew! That's a mouthful. Now let's put that pretty tome back on the shelf and let it collect dust while I hunt around for a job. I am very grateful for those four years at school, but ready to be moving on. Goodbye college, thanks for all the great times. Hello world...HOLY CRAP, NOW WHAT DO I DO?!? *panicpanicpanic* Ahem. Sorry about that. Moving on...

So, that being said, I am home for the summer. And for an undetermined amount of time after that. I've been enjoying getting back into reading, setting up my reading plans for this summer (which will probably overflow into September). So far the plan is to finally get around to reading the whole Harry Potter series (which I started aeons ago but never finished). Along with various and sundry other books. I just finished reading 'Fatherland' by Robert Harris, which was quite good - like a film noir in novel form. I can give more detailed comments if anyone asks.

Theatre stuff: I'm back with the Poultney Summer Theatre Company this summer, in their production of 'Romeo & Juliet 1958'. The play is being set in the 1950's, in a small New England college town, entangled in the conflict between the established old-money families (the Capulets) and the rising working class (the Montagues). This is NOT West Side Story. I've been cast as Lady Capulet (Juliet's mother), and am extremely excited - though more than a little nervous - about the role. Our first meeting is in two days, and after that it will be rehearsals and practicing and theatrical intensity until the beginning of August. 
(Shameless plug for the PSTC right here)

I have quite a queue going of sewing projects for this summer. First on the list is my bridesmaid's dress for the wedding of a college friend in less than a month. I'm so excited, it's going to be a beautiful wedding - all cherry blossoms and medieval/celtic touches.

After that I have a couple of commissions, the wedding presents that I would like to make for several people (yeah...there's a lot of people getting married these days), and *hopefully* a ren faire costume for any faires I might go to this summer. But we'll see about that.


I think that pretty much covers it all. So I think I'll get off the computer now, and get back to unpacking my school stuff. Which is still about 40% in boxes.

Alles Gute

Tora-con 2011

A few weeks ago, some of my friends and I made our second trip to Toracon at RIT in Rochester.

Our second convention was a hit - once again, I shall explain with pictures and captions.

Lauren as Holo from 'Spice and Wolf'.

Myself as Death of the Endless from Neil Gaiman's 'The Sandman'.

Mark as that-guy-whose-name-Caroline-can't-remember from 'Rozen Maiden'.

Ruzena as Seychelles (with Mr. Doffin), with Russia and Prussia, all from 'Axis Powers Hetalia'.

Mark and Mr. Doffin at lunch.

As Death again, at the dance.

Lolitas! Penny, Tempest, Nikki and Ruzena.

Lauren in steampunk, Ruzena in lolita.

Lauren in steampunk, Mark in aristocrat lolita.

Meself in aristocrat lolita.

Lauren and I with Zukko from Avatar.

Directing 'King Lear' - or, "However did we manage that?"

Saturday, April 17th, 2010 - Our beautiful cast, with me and Dave (exhausted but triumphant directors) in the foreground. Photo courtesy of L. Hewell.


***

     I am finally posting this story, just past the one-year anniversary of the event.

    To this day, I'm still not sure how we did it. It was a headache, it was a dream, and of course, it was an adventure. All I can say is that God must have been with us, because otherwise I don't think we could have survived the ordeal.  

    The week after it was all done I went into a state of semi-depression, because it was all finished, and there wouldn't be any more awesome rehearsals that made me love the story of Lear and the whole process of doing a play even more. Though yeah, that does make me think I must be some sort of masochist, to be missing the first three months or so of the semester where the stress level was murderous, and people were getting discouraged and distracted and fed up with each other. One of the cast members later confessed to me that at times, she "thought we were going down in flames". But in the end it was completely worth it (as plays tend to be).

    I am so grateful. I'm sure that I will remember this as one of the best experiences of my life.

The Beginnings

    Dave gets credit for coming up with the idea in the first place.

    Back in April 2009, the Houghton College Shakespeare Players had just finished a performance of The Tempest (which Dave and I were both in), and the actors were all standing outside the auditorium in a line to receive our audience. And somewhere in that time, Dave turned to me and said that he was thinking of directing King Lear in the next spring semester. I asked if he had someone to co-direct, since we've found that no full-time student should attempt directing alone. And he said, "No, unless you want to."

    My first reaction was to think "Oh gosh, no, not me", but I told him - and now I'm glad I did - that I would think about it.

    That fall we were in London for an off-campus semester, along with thirteen other Houghton students (best three months of my life so far, but I'll talk about that somewhere else). By then I agreed to co-direct, and we set to work on writing our bid and planning what we could for the production. This required some serious evenings in the pubs of Islington, a large pizza at the Stringray Cafe in Highbury, and a viewing of King Lear with the incredible Ian McKellen in the title role. 

    Now, the way that HCSP chooses its plays is by a vote each semester on what the next term's play will be - chosen from among the bids that have been put forward. Since Dave and I were off-campus, we emailed in a bid describing our ideas for Lear, what our theatrical experiences were, a budget estimate, etc. The people back at Houghton hooked up with us through skype and asked questions that way, and said that everyone would know the results of the vote within a few days. 

    The next Sunday, I had just come back from church and was standing in the hallway talking to some fellow students when Dave came running up from the library (wearing what is probably the happiest face I've ever seen on anyone) and gave me a giant hug. It took me a minute, but once I realized that we had indeed won the vote and would be directing King Lear in the spring, I went into a strange state of excited shaking and squeaking for the next few hours.

Take a Deep Breath and Dive

    We dove right in with making posters and preparing scenes to have people read at auditions. We wanted to make sure all the biggest roles would be tried out - not just because they're important, obviously, but to set a high standard for everyone to see how close they come to reaching the top. 

    A constant problem that faces HCSP is that the Houghton student body is about 2/3 female, and most of the characters in Shakespeare's plays are male. There are always a few small roles that can be changed from male to female, but it seems to be an accepted fact of Shakespearean theatre today that at least a few male roles will end up being played by women. Added to this is the fact that, for some reason, not many guys (at least guys at Houghton) seem to audition for plays - and especially not for Shakespeare. We only had three gentlemen come to auditions. My reaction was "seriously, guys?" What, is acting as a threat to your "manliness" or something like that? There's nothing girly about acting (where do you even get that idea from?), and absolutely nothing girly about this play - sword fights, battles, eye-gouging, the works. Nothing frilly about it. And we won't even make you wear tights. And even if we did, I still say there's nothing wimpy about Shakespeare. What are you afraid of? Geez. Ok, end of speech. 

    I have a feeling that directors don't usually get to see an actor's best work at auditions - it kind of gets drawn out as the rehearsal process goes on - but in our case, there were a few auditions that just blew us away - in particular, that of the 19-year-old girl who would unexpectedly become our Lear. 

     Back in our first planning stages in London, we had said things like "Of course, we will end up casting a lot of girls as men, but Lear HAS to be played by a guy." We just didn't want to do any risky gender-bending with such a hugely important role. Before we even got back to Houghton, we were emailing guys on campus who we knew were talented actors and asking them to audition for the part. But none of them could take it on that semester, either because of school or other dramatic commitments. There were two other plays performed on the Houghton campus this semester, and two musical shows, so there was some unavoidable (though friendly) competition going on for good actors. In the end, we had something like 20 girls come to auditions - and only three guys. 

     Lizzie read the part of Lear better than anyone else. We had her read as a few characters, but then she picked a scene of Lear's to read - the mad scene. By the end of it, she almost had me in tears, and both Dave and I were left sitting there with mouths gaping. 

     That was the first night of auditions. By the end of the second evening, having had only a couple guys show up, we asked Lizzie to take on the role and she accepted (as she later told us, her thought had been  "When else will I get to get the chance to play Lear?").

     The final cast had a total of 7 guys (including the three that auditioned). A couple of these were friends of Dave who were shanghaied into filling miscellaneous little roles like "soldier" or "messenger". The rest were wonderful women of Houghton who weren't afraid to try out. And Lizzie wasn't the only brilliant surprise to come to us. We had some wonderful students come in, some of whom had little to zero experience with Shakespearean acting - like Alice, who played Kent, and Audrey, who played Regan. These and many other cast members just blew me away with their talent during those three months of rehearsals.

Rehearsals (and all that went with them)

     We pretty much knew from the beginning that we wanted to stage the play in the time when it's believed to have happen, in ancient Britain. This surprised no one - Dave and I are both raving fans of all things Celtic.

     One theme that we really wanted the actors to go into was the conflicts of belief and tradition that Britain was going through in those days. In the early middle ages, Catholic Christianity had moved into the country, but the old beliefs were still very much present. Lear and the other older people in the story (Gloucester, Kent, etc.) would be the ones that remembered the old beliefs - there are moments where Lear calls on Nature, the goddess, such as when he calls down curses on his daughter Goneril. During the first week of rehearsals, Dave would explain this background, and how we wanted to portray it, to the actors, so that they would have these conflicts of old vs. new, belief vs. belief to think about as they worked on developing their characters. There were also a couple times when Dave and I met with the "families" in the play to let them interact as a group and talk about their family history and relationships to each other. That was fun...wish we could have done it more often...
 

A somewhat less-than-serious moment of rehearsing the final scene. Left to right: Kent, Edgar, Lear and a (dead?) Cordelia.

 

     The biggest moment of panic came when, about halfway through the semester, we had to re-cast the Fool. In case you don't know the story of Lear, the Fool is a wise, enigmatic character, a friend of Lear's and perhaps the only one the king doesn't punish for telling him the truth. Like most of Shakespeare's fools, he is perhaps the wisest person in the play. Sometime in February or March, our very talented Fool had to drop the play because she had been told that, if she kept up with all the things demanding her attention, she would not graduate. It was very sad for everyone, and somewhat panic-inducing for the directors, since this meant we had to hold auditions to find someone new for this role. Thankfully, we were lucky. A talented young man - recommended by our first Fool, in fact - came along to pick up the part. I am incredibly grateful to him for this - it can't be easy to memorize a role like that with half the practice time already gone.

     So, from early January to mid-April, that was life. We rehearsed four nights a week, 6-10 pm, with the play broken apart into little bits and pieces to work with everyone's individual schedules. One of the downsides to college plays (at least with this group) is that you usually don't get full run-throughs of the play until very close to showtime. It's just hard to schedule them when you're working with so many different schedules (over 20, in this case).
    As is often the case with rehearsals, I found that these nights spent running scenes in a third-floor classroom never failed to cheer me up. It was sometimes exhilarating, sometimes sluggish, sometimes even frustrating, but for some reason, I almost always returned to my dorm room in a better mood than when I had left it. Guess that's just what Shakespeare does to me.

The Finale

  The directors on opening night. Photo courtesy of J. Duttweiler.

      The cast and crew returned from Easter break only to dive headfirst into what thespians somewhat-affectionately refer to as "hell week" - aka, the brain-frying days of tech and dress rehearsals that come immediately before opening night. I hit my all-time low that week, when the stress and the worries hit a boiling point and all came pouring out in a near-mental-breakdown on the phone with my mom. The day after that I was almost afraid to go back over to the recital hall for our last dress rehearsal; worries intensified by the fact that Shakespeare Players' faculty advisor came that night to see the show. He's pretty much the Shakespeare expert on campus, and one of my favorite professors to boot, so I was crossing my fingers and praying that he would like the show. And he did! 

      Weirdly enough, or perhaps not so weirdly, that encouragement was all I needed. After that vote of confidence, I got the feeling that it was all going to turn out all right, and we entered our three-day run of shows with high hopes.

Lear getting his/her beard attached. Goneril on the right.

      Despite the usual assortment of little slip-ups, the show was successful. Despite all the times over the course of the semester that we thought we were going down in flames, we made it.

      Recently, Dave told me that when he had first talked to our faculty advisor about doing Lear, he was told "Don't." It was too much to take on, too much to handle, and (especially) we would not be able to find an actor capable of playing Lear. I'm glad that Dave didn't pass this on to me until AFTER the play was done. But considering I heard this after the fact, it makes me even more proud of everyone who helped bring the show together.

   

Links:

Article from the Houghton student newspaper.

Promo video made by Rebekah, our Duke of Albany. 

Excellent web page about King Lear - This guy is cool. His page gave me a lot to think about and pass on to the cast.

The Hamlet Song

I'm taking a Shakespeare class (yay!) in this my last semester at Houghton. Today we were talking about Hamlet. And this is what Dr. Wardwell showed us. The whole play in under 5 minutes!

Tora-con 2010

Pretty much just pics for this post. I'll explain stuff in the captions.

Once upon a time, there was a group of college friends who, finding that they all liked anime, decided to go to a convention.

They stayed in a slightly sketch, but very cheap motel...

... and did strange things to their hair the next morning.

At the convention, they wore awesome costumes, walked around a lot, and talked to other people in awesome costumes.

They were all very proud of their costumes.

(In this picture, clockwise from left: Lauren as Holo the Wise Wolf from 'Spice and Wolf', Ruzena as Lucy/Nyu from 'Elfen Lied', Caroline as Robin Sena from 'Witch Hunter Robin', and Mark as Lelouch/Zero from 'Code Geass'.)

(Yes, that is the blog author in her costume. The hair sausages are painful.)

The friends stood in some very long lines...

...to see some very cool people.

They baffled Walmart shoppers...

...watched Pedobear dance...

...walked in the rain,

and had a very strange dinner on the way home.

In short, a great time was had by all.

The end.

(photo courtesy of A. Bogotova, R. Thibault, and myself)

'The Tempest' movie trailer.

Here!

I am so far beyond excited.
What's really funny is that they use a very similar theme for the mainlanders costumes; very similar to what our mainlanders had on this summer.

Left to Right: Antonio, Sebastian, Alonso, Holy Gonzalo, Adrian (all played by women of PSTC's 'The Tempest', summer 2010). I don't remember whose facebook I got this picture from, so all I can say to credit is 'I didn't take this picture!'

I wonder if this addiction is chemical...?

There are two things that keep me from saying with any surety "I am never doing this again.".
Due to a disgustingly stuffy and humid heat wave, the kind that comes only once a year in Vermont, this last week of rehearsals for 'The Tempest' has been a rough one. No one feels like moving, to say nothing of throwing the whole self into a scene, though we try our best. But sadly, the weather has been a drain on everyone. A few days ago I got really discouraged, and even though I know a lot of this is just because of the weather (what a silly thing to cause so much trouble...) I feel the little, familiar voices in my head going "What the heck are you doing?", "Next time around I'm taking a break", or even (gasp!) "I give up on this Shakespeare stuff".
First - Shakespeare is my great stabilizer. I remember how this summer was before rehearsals began. While it was wonderful to be home from school and to have basically no set schedule, by the end of June I had been starting to feel almost paralyzed with inaction. In other words, I was too relaxed. Shakespeare gives me something to feel dedicated to. I guess some people get this sort of fulfillment from their jobs, some from hobbies, and so on. People need things to pour themselves into; for me, it's Shakespeare. And besides that, rehearsals are like my emotional anchors - I realized sometime last semester when we were working on Lear that no matter how I felt when I left to go to practice, I always came back in a better mood. This summer has been the same way, with the exception of this past week (which is part of why I was getting down about it).

And second - I know from experience that every time I'm involved in a show, I hit this point about halfway through rehearsals when I think those very same things. And when we get to the end, and we do the show, I always take it back, and the next time around, I'm back at auditions, throwing myself into it again.

I guess these are signs of addiction. But if I really am addicted, please - don't send me to rehab.